Fake Banksy NFT sold for £244k through artist's website; hacker later returns winning bid

A fake Banksy NFT was sold for 100 ETH through the artist’s official website. In a strange development, the hacker responsible for tricking the buyer has returned $336,000 (£244,000) to the bidder. A link directed to a bidding website was posted on a now-deleted page of banksy.co.uk, reported BBC News. The man had offered to pay 90 per cent more than other bidders, which had ended the auction early. 

Fake Banksy NFT sold 

Banksy's team told the BBC that the NFT auctions were not in any way related to the artist. The Banksy fan who wanted to remain anonymous revealed that he believed that he was buying the world-famous graffiti artist's first-ever NFT. The man has explained that he suspected that Banksy's site was hacked, and he was conned. As per the BBC report, the hacker had returned the money except for the transaction fee of about £5,000.

The Banksy fan uses the Twitter name Pranksy believed that the press coverage and he had found the hacker and followed him on Twitter may have led to the refund of the money to him. Pranksy has revealed the details on Twitter, which said, "So my bid of 100 ETH was accepted for the potential #Banksy first #NFT on @opensea. The link was removed from his website so it could have been a very elaborate hoax, my guess is that is what it will be, only time will tell!". 

Banksy's official site had a new page called NFT which directed bidders to an auction site selling an NFT called Great Redistribution of the Climate Change Disaster, reported BBC News. Through NFT, the artwork can be "tokenised" to create a digital certificate of ownership. The man learned about the auction through an anonymous person in his community on the social network Discord. Furthermore, he noted the URL of the website before bidding, so according to him, the website could be hacked. After his bid was accepted, he believed that "it was probably fake". As per the BBC report, Banksy's team did not respond to questions about how the site was compromised.

Image Credit: Pranksy/Twitter